Press Release – DSIDE
The Artist is one of Wellington’s most prolific street painters, now working solo as DSIDE after over a decade of being the anonymous half of the BMD duo [which publicly ended in October 2016]. Utilising this long standing public position to activate and discuss local and global Environmental and Conservation issues, with recent years being highly focused on Species that are under threat due to Human Impact.

During this near decade and a half of prolific street painting, everything by the Artist was direct to wall, no tradable artworks were produced with these names [apart from a few very rare pieces donated to charities]. So this will be the first time ever that work like this has been produced and made available for the public.

“..countless, hundreds maybe more walls have been painted over these years, of them more have gone- been buffed, built out, knocked down, or eaten by the game -than have survived and while this is part of the ever shifting and temporality of street beauty, it’s also symbolic of what’s happening to the planets Species, they’re disappearing, surviving only as something you seen once or someone has a photo of, though while walls don’t really matter- these Animals do, they’re going extinct, right now, at unfathomable realities.. Just while working on the show, The Northern White Rhino was pronounced functionally extinct with the last male dying in March.. Sht is for real, and while this is one of the main subjects DSIDE has painted walls about over the last 14 years, it’s getting scary and its importance is the reason that have removed the resistance to Exhibit in a Gallery. This Exhibition is a way to present multiple discussions and refined aspects that have painted about in public for years, though to utilize the Gallery realm to have them all in the same room..”

There will be 9 main works in the Exhibition, with supporting installation, and Dside has also painted the three storey high wall on the side of the Gallery.

The Exhibition is a one night only event, on the 05.05.2018.

Doors opening to the Public at 18:18 and works becoming available to purchase after 20:20. The Exhibition will be in central Wellington, hosted by the private and elusive McKlouski & Bouw Gallery.

“..Wellington was the incubator for the early years, and has again been the base for the past few, so these Wellington streets have inspired, through ups and downs, permission and unpermissions, agreements and conflict, tiny handmade stickers to the cities biggest walls, from the years when street art was vandalism through the years of it becoming of value and now its strange place of acceptance, and being as all public works are site responsive there’s no doubt the style was in harmony with this city that it grew together with.. So the first Exhibition had to be here..”

During his career the Artist has painted some of New Zealand’s largest murals [most locally notably, the Shark Wall opposite Te Papa], also heavily across America as well as Canada, Mexico, Hawaii, Rarotonga, Thailand, Indonesia, and Australia, including a long list of Street Art Festivals nationally and internationally. Has created site specific installations for the Canterbury Museum, Govett Brewster Art Gallery, Puke Ariki Museum, MOTAT, and won awards for Interior Design Installations. Along with working for clients/groups such as WWF, Microsoft, Hawaiian Airlines, SPCA, StarShip Children’s Hospital, SeaWalls, Pangeaseed, ILoveUgly, Fashion Quarterly, Wellington Orchestra, EcoWare, NZArtShow, IVHQ, Museum Art Hotel, RMH Wellington, and was a part of the YGB Artist Collective [Young Gifted & Broke with groups like HomeBrew and @Peace] The Artist has also recently finished his Master’s Degree in Contemporary Fine Arts.